Chandigarh Ahmedabad – Le Corbusier - Vereniging van ...

What is amiss: these ventures or our own lives? I remember being caught in New York in 1962 during the
Cuban missile crisis. All over the city there was mounting alarm about possible nuclear attack, endless talk of
air raids, and so forth. After three harrowing days, my wife and I decided to return to Boston. The highway was
crowded with cars, jamming all the cloverleaf intersections. I was wretched. I thought to myself: Damn Sant'
Elia and all those Futurists! Couldn't they see that their visions wouldn't work? We were listening to the car
radio when suddenly we heard the announcement: the Russian ships had turned back! All at once we realised
that America and Russia were not going to fight after all, that this marked a turning point in the cold war, that
there would probably be world peace for a decade or more. It was an enchanted moment. I looked out the
window at the beautiful highway intersections and the myriad cars arching gracefully through the night, red
taillights aglow. Our misery, dear Brutus, lies not in our buildings, but in ourselves.
We have been diminished because our perceptions have become small. We can never be bigger than the
questions we define. What made the architects of the 20th century exceptional was not so much their talent as
the import of the issues they tackled. For, as Stendahl wrote about Napoleon, "There are no great men, there
are only great events." The attitudes and values of the 1920s, which Peter Smithson calls the "Heroic Age of
Architecture", had receded: with Chandigarh they burst forth again, like an Indian summer.
The venture remains unique in our minds, not only for what it accomplished but also for what it conceived of
doing. This is what generated the enthusiasm and the dedication of the team around Le Corbusier. To them,
the building of the city was the central fact of their lives. They gave the task everything they had. Le Corbusier
demanded no less. Architecture was for him a deeply moral act, and to us in India this was comprehensible;
he was right. Certainly without such a commitment even architects of enormous talent can be vitiated, as
witness the buildings that are going up In the Gulf today. Ironically enough, it is the poor countries of the
world, like India and Bangladesh, that go to Le Corbusier and Kahn for their buildings. Rightly or wrongly, they
believe that architecture is a passionate, nearly sacred, undertaking. I sometimes wonder what would have
happened to Le Corbusier if he had landed a commission in the Gulf! Would he have accepted? (Remember
The City of Tomorrow). And would he have survived?
India was lucky to get Le Corbusier; Le Corbusier too, was lucky to get India.
When all is said and done, 25 years is not such a long period; it is a mere eyeblink in history. Over the
decades to come, new issues will arise and Chandigarh will have to measure up to them. Perhaps the future
will be even harsher than we have been on Le Corbusier's abilities and insights as a city planner. But to the
incredible power of his architecture, Chandigarh will always bear steadfast and unique testament. His was the
kind of commitment Hinduism has always respected and understood.
India, in its turn, brought out the best in Le Corbusier. It was as though the warm sunlight and the lifeaccepting
patterns of the people loosened up the Swiss in him. As in his earlier visit to Brazil, he changed. His
buildings grew more exuberant, more tropical, which is to say they became more pluralistic, less rigidly
predetermined. Old temples and cities in India (like their counterparts elsewhere) are a collection of a good
many decisions -- some transparently rational, others opaque -- that makes them as equivocal, as
unfathomable, as music that you want to hear again and again. Thus, perhaps, the Vedic saying, "An architect
should not finish his buildings; he should know how to leave 40 per cent to God."
India is an ancient land. Over the centuries there have been other new cities like Chandigarh and other
prophets like Le Corbusier: Fatehpur Sikri, Patrick Geddes, Edwin Lutyens, Golconda, Mandu. Today many of
them are not perceived at all as foreign elements but as an integral part of the Indian landscape. Yet when, for
instance, Fatehpur Sikri was first built, it must have seemed outlandish and something landed from the moon.
Today we see it as a very Indian city. For this timeless civilisation has never fretted over labels like old and
new, indigenous and foreign; it establishes affinities far more fundamental than that. And Hinduism has
developed a truly amazing pluralistic schema where new and old, light and dark can co-exist, be absorbed,
endure...
India as blotting paper. Who knows? A hundred years from now, perhaps Chandigarh will also fit seamlessly
into the Punjabi ethos; perhaps it will be perceived as a famous old Indian town, and Le Corbusier will be
acknowledged ... as the greatest Indian architect of them all?
["Chandigarh: the view from Benares", reprinted with permission from the author ]
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